Inflated with cold December air a white plastic bag from the ice cream store blew across the barren asphalt parking lot like a lone holiday balloon adrift in a ghostly parade.

Inside the Asian Taste restaurant aromatic smells of sizzling Chinese food filled the room. Sitting alone at a table for two, an Asian man licked both chop sticks at the same time and placed containers from his take-out order into a brown bag to toss in the garbage can.

“Very good,” he told the woman owner who was raised near Hong Kong, one of three people including her husband who run the business.

“Thank you,” she said between cooking and taking orders on the phone and in person.

A caramel-colored couple sat tucked into a corner table, the woman wearing a black skull cap tight over her ears, the man neat in a track suit and red sneakers, sharing a plate of steaming dumplings. Talking quietly between bites they listened to each other as they speared plump pieces of white dough with plastic forks.

Then there’s me, Mr. Tofu, the name the woman behind the counter says she will always remember because she knows my consistent spicy bean curd order by heart even before I get there on Friday night. Tonight, though, I arrive unannounced a day early because I just got back from Clearwater Beach, Florida.

For the past week I drank cold fresh orange juice and rum in my bathing suit by the Frenchy’s Oasis Motel swimming pool or on the patio outside our room overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway brimming with glistening lights, luxury boats, hungry pelicans and a sleek blue-gray dolphin Stephanie and I named Harrietta. I got a sun tan, ate grilled grouper burgers every day and told my outlaw tales at Frenchy’s Saltwater Café with RayRay, Canadian Mike, KK and Chris, old friends we’ve known there for decades.

Now I’m home in Scranton sharing dinner with strangers at nightfall on Christmas Day.

A woman who sat in her car for the past 20 minutes walked into the restaurant to pick up the order she called in. Ten minutes later an Indian man walked in. The woman in charge seemed to know his order, too.

At the table closest to the window a mother with chestnut hair pulled back and unlaced sneakers, a father in a hooded camouflage sweatshirt and a child with bushy blond hair ate from white take-out containers. The baby looked like his mother. Sitting on daddy’s lap wearing no shoes or socks, his little feet dangled no bigger than egg rolls. Wriggling tiny toes glistening red from the winter chill, he laughed as mommy and daddy talked with words that will help shape their future forever.

Did Santa Claus leave gifts for this baby this morning? Where will this young family stay tonight? Where will they stay tomorrow? I had no reason to believe they’re homeless but also had no reason to believe they’re not sleeping in their car. Unlike the woman behind the counter who will always know Mr. Tofu’s order, I’ll never know if this mother, father and child ever find “room at the inn” in a rich society usually too busy for people like them.

What I did know as I left the Chinese restaurant carrying take-out was that a bright sliver of moon hung low in the darkening sky, a thin waxing crescent looming above our earthly hope that wise people on our planet will truly labor to provide a healthy and happy new year for us all.